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ERRATA 
Page 36, line 8. For 1844 read 1884. 


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Page 71, line 6. For “imitation” read ‘‘initiation”. 


Eliot Clark’s ‘JOHN TWACHTMAN” 








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JOHN TWACHTMAN 


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PRIVATELY PRINTED 


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THE AMERICAN ARTISTS SERIES 
George Inness. By Elliott Daingerfield. (Out of print) 
Fifty Paintings by George Inness. 

Homer Martin. By Frank Jewett Mather, Jr. 
Fifty-eight Paintings by Homer Martin. 
Alexander Wyant. By Eliot Clark. 
Sixty Paintings by Alexander Wyant. , 
Ralph Albert Blakelock. By Elliott Daingerfield. 
Winslow Homer. By Kenyon Cox. 
Albert Pinkham Ryder. By Frederic Fairchild Sherman. 
John H. Twachtman. By Eliot Clark. 

IN PRESS 
J. Francis Murphy. By Eliot Clark. 
J. Alden Weir. By Frederic Fairchild Sherman. 





ILLUSTRATIONS 


Portrait of John H. Twachtman 


By J. Alden Weir . . . Frontispiece 
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JOHN TWACHTMAN 








JOHN TWACHTMAN 


PART ONE 


VagIIE true account of an artist's life is 

“a1 rendered by his own hand, fixed for- 
ever on canvas in unalterable form. 
Could we read the subtle thought ex- 
pressed thereon we would gain an 
3 insight into the character of the paint- 
er and the times in which he lived, for the brush is a 
most sensitive instrument recording exactly the feel- 
ing and mental state of its master. Focused in its 
material pointis not only the aspiration of the ego, but 
the very world spirit seeks expression through its 
charged and narrow channel. The painter lives in his 
work, and his character is revealed therein. 

The expression of the past could not have been 
otherwise; nor the present. It is the immutable law 
of cause and effect. It is as inconceivable to imagine 
an impressionistic picture being painted at the time of 
the renaissance as a picture of that time being sincere- 
ly produced at present. We read from the faces of 
pictures as from the faces of life the eternal paradox of 
the universal existing in the particular, theimpersonal 
in the personal. 

In the work of John Twachtman we see his true 
character. Whatever may have been his outward 
action, his pictures reveal his inner spirit. Outwardly 


z 





fi 
INAS) 
ot ies 


A LIRA 


gruff, hedonistic, skeptical and insensitive; inwardly 
he was impressionable, sensitive and sincere. In manz 
ner bantering, didactic, inconsistent, careless; in spirit 
delicate, constant, naive and loving. An instinctive 
understanding of true aesthetic values gave poise and 
confidence; but a lack of patronage and a contempt 
for popular banalities created skepticism and incred: 
ulity. Thus we see in Twachtman, the man, a dual 
character. One instinctive, the other acquired; one 
real, the other affected. In judging the man we must 
make this distinction; in judging his art it is not neces- 
sary, for therein we find the man truly himself. 

The saving grace of the skepticis a sense of humor, 
and Twachtman, perceiving the significance and rele 
ativity of values, played withthem for hisown amuse- 
ment.. But his wit was of a personal nature and his 
jest contained a sting. Faithful and consistent in his 
work, he gave himself the privilege and pleasure of 
changing his fancy and opinion at will. Of Twacht- 
man’s whimsicality Carolyn Mase writes: ‘‘He was 
inconsistent in details, but consistent about big things. 
For instance, for months he harangued against the elm 
trees, and then he discovered that they were the most 
beautiful of trees. He was swayed by his moods, his 
emotions. One day a thing appealed to him, the next 
day it bored him. One day his talk was spiritual — 
you looked for the halo; the next day you laughed at 
yourself for the feeling. But the steady, strong con- 
victions which were his towards his work never 
varied —never even by a hair’s breadth.” I well recall 


IO 


an incident at Gloucester. Several artists were stop- 
ping together at one of the Summer hotels. Twacht- 
man had been painting rather large canvases (that is, 
about twenty-five by thirty, for pictures were not 
painted as large at that time as at present). He took 
great joy in joking the others about painting on small 
canvases. One couldn't paint a picture on them; why 
not work on a real canvas, and so forth. Within a 
fortnight’s time he was painting small thumb-box 
panels, using cigar-box covers which he treasured 
with great care. I recall also that he was always jok- 
ing, and that often his jokes, which were of a personal 
nature, would end in a row. To which Miss Mase 
refers: ‘‘He loved to stir up the fads of people, and 
one day on his way to the dining-room at the Holley 
House, knowing well the people, he said, ‘ You say 
sozand-so, and I will say so-and-so, and in two minutes 
we will have arowon. Andintwo minutes they did 
have a row on.” An echo of the gentle art of Jimmy 
Whistler; yet not so studied or subtle, but rather ob- 
vious, rollicking and fun making. 

Twachtman was not, in the accepted sense, a cul: 
tured man. Skeptical of acquired learning and intole- 
rant of show, he had, nevertheless, a true apprecia- 
tion of real values. There was nothing academical 
about the man. He considered things at first hand and 
accepted them for what they meant to him, not what 
they were accredited to be. Everything was, there- 
fore, a personal discovery, and its value was according 
to his personal interest. The label on a thing was 


am | 


merely amundane decoy. He was suspicious of things 
that were generally accepted and, therefore, taken for 
granted. But Twachtman was not a belligerent radi- 
cal. He had too much humor for that. Independent 
and courageous, he was, however, humanly suscep- 
tible to praise and approval. Modest and unassuming, 
he, nevertheless, liked the glow of admiration and en- 
joyed the propinquity of a credulous circle. Not con- 
sciously a poseur, he affected something of the flair 
of his more illustrious confrere, Whistler. He would 
have delighted in being apt at aphorism and repartee, 
and sometimes was, in the opinion of his hearers, but 
in the presence of wit he was more personal than bril- 
liant. With his comrades he was jovial and debonair. 
He rather liked the distinction of being modernistic, 
and poked fun at the old timers. With younger men 
and with his pupils, or to those to whom he took a 
fancy, he was not only sympathetic but radiated a 
genuine enthusiasm. There was no sense of separate: 
ness. R.J. Wickenden writes of Twachtman in Paris 
in 1883: ‘ Twachtman was eight years my senior and 
had already achieved a certain recognition, but no 
consciousness of superiority was evident in his frank 
‘camaraderie’. He was a student among students, 
anxious to add to his store of skill and knowledge from 
every available source.” He had a great fondness for 
children. Nothing pleased him more than to treat the 
gang and joke with the youngsters, who in turn jol- 
lied him. The Gods took him young. It is inconceiv- 
able to think of Twachtman as an old man. 


I2 











tt TS 





Twachtman was not studious in an academical or 
exacting sense. He was not methodical. Hemay have 
laughed at inspiration or the divine spark. Neverthe- 
less, he followed his impulse and his personal predi- 
lections. At times he would work constantly and 
consistently, and then again lay fallow. But always 
he was impressionable, and on the lookout. His eye 
was always searching and measuring. ‘‘Johnny’ 
would swing along, his eyes eagerly worming the hid- 
den beauty out of the landscape — his thoughts never 
off ‘nature’. Even in the midst of some of his most 
fanciful sayings, or interrupting a joke, or breaking 
with a witticism, he would stop and point out some 
beauty of line, some harmony of color which had es- 
caped the others.” 

Suspicious of the over serious, he saw art and life 
asone. An admirer of the great masters, he, never: 
theless, believed in his own reactions. His painting is 
purely sensuous in the sense of its being a record of 
his visual impressions, and in that sense he was truly 
an impressionist. 

He was equally awake to aesthetic enthusiasms 
and susceptible tonew discoveries. In Munich we see 
the echoes of the old masters; in Holland and France 
he became aware of the beauty of grays and the sig- 
nificance of values, and later he was saturated with 
the significance of envelopment and light. The art of 
the Japanese was an important discovery, and to the 
Japanese Twachtman, like Whistler, owes much of 
his appreciation of arrangement and design. It was a 


es, 


new point of view as distinguished from the tradi- 
tional picture making of the west. Then Velasquez 
was the idol for a time. But that may have been an 
echo from Whistler. 

Had Twachtman lived, would he have entertained 
a similar enthusiasm for the Post Impressionists? The 

uestion is not an idle one, and if it could have been 
enacted, might have been the test of character. Noth:z 
ing is truly more pathetic than a one time modernist 
becoming an old timer. Twachtman was, however, 
not a faddist or an opportunist. In his work, from the 
earliest examples, we see an absolute and unimpeach- 
able integrity, an integrity for which he sacrificed 
popularity and reward, and we observe a personal tie 
that binds it all together, that despite its disparity gives 
it unity and purpose. Susceptible to contemporary 
creation as he was to visual impression, he used it for 
his own purpose, assimilated it in his own being, made 
of it a living, vital force, and hammered the malleable 
matter in his own crucible. 

Twachtman’sattitude toward nature, hisapproach 
to his subject, was not that of a naturalist, a pantheist 
or arealist. It was more truly that ofan artist. He was 
not curious about botanical structure or the absolute 
veracity of naturalistic form; he had not the religious 
feeling of the affinity of nature with its creator or its 
relation toman; nor was hea graphic reporter of real: 
istic facts. Hesaw in nature the means for an arrange- 
ment of form and color; he sought not so much the 
beauty of a part as the relation of parts to an organized 


14 


whole. He was not emotional in a romantic sense, 
that sense which is related more to the association of 
ideas or the symbolical suggestion of nature. He was 
not affected by the dramatic and carefully refrained 
from introducing the moving and turbulent aspects 
of nature. He was suspicious of the interpretation of 
the so-called moods of nature. Disdaining poetical 
associations he respected the reaction of his eye, not 
for its informing facts, but for its aesthetic sensibility. 
Therein he is related, not only to the dictum and 
practice of Whistler, but to the aesthetic doctrine of 
his time. 

If Twachtman was not poetical in the literary 
sense, a form of expression which requires the associ- 
ative and intellectual idea, he was truly poetical in the 
aesthetic sense, a sense which is more elusive, possi: 
bly because less used, and which finds its poetical ex- 
pression in painting not so much in a merely graphic 
way, but in the more abstract expression of form and 
color, which is a language quite unique and independ: 
ent of the thoughts formed by words. His work is, 
therefore, not without idea, butitisanaesthetic rather 
than a literary idea. The aesthetic idea in painting is 
not, however, created out of nothing. Its beginning 
and evolution, like every other form of expression, is 
from the human emotion, and Twachtman was essen- 
tially human. His nature was comparatively little 
corrupted by superficial conventionalities. Instinc- 
tively sensitive to his environment, susceptible to the 
quickened tendencies of the artistic ‘‘milieu”, and 


1 


animated by the joy of living, T wachtman intuitively 
expressed in his painting the newly discovered beauty 
of the outer world reflected by means of the eye on 
the inner soul. The world in which he lived was his 
subj ect, his impressions of it his expression. Hedonistic 
in spirit, he wasa highly sensitized medium on whom 
the objective world acted and conveyed through the 
sensuous susceptibility the mystical meaning of man- 
ifestation expressed in form and color. Careless of 
himself in so many ways, not building up with calcu- 
lated purpose or for material reward, Twachtman 
never sacrificed his purity of purpose to popular ap- 
plause. 

Robert Reid has happily summed up his impres- 
sion: ‘ Twachtman was of those to whom the subtle 
beauties of nature, which, though not hidden, have 
been seen only by the few, appealed most strongly; 
and it was the element in his nature which responded 
to that appeal that gave the charm to his work. En- 
thusiasm seems to have been the keynote of his char- 
acter, a singularly gentle enthusiasm, a smiling rather 
than a laughing sympathy with his work, his family 
and friends. In his work it pervaded all he did, from 
the pastel note of a wild flower on a bit of tinted paper 
to his completest painting.” 

In his teaching he encouraged the personal view 
point, and prompted his pupils to seek new discover- 
ies. He was not a methodical teacher. Drudgery and 
determination didn’t count. One could stipple a draw: 
ing until doomsday and be only told to go home and 


16 








wash dishes. He was intolerant. An artistic note 
would win more favor than a finished drawing; an 
aesthetic appreciation was more highly prized than a 
literal and exact rendering. Observation was encour- 

aged more than intellectual knowledge. The master 
was not over strong on construction. The study of 
anatomy destroyed the naivete of the eye. It wasa 
difhcult matter to reanimate an antique, and T wacht- 

man used the cast more as an object for visual study 
than for a dissertation on beauty. He insisted on the 

relation of the result to the means employed. Charcoal 
was an instrument with a point, not to be smudged, 

but etched. Delicacy and sensitiveness of touch were 

a part of expression not to be slighted or clouded; the 

paper was not to be a Nubian battlefield, but a deco- 

rated surface. In the antique class at the League the 

master would give a bi-weekly criticism of work done 

outside class. In thishe reveled. He delighted in start- 

ing artistic adventure. Free from the static model and 

realistic comparison, he incited a search for the pictur- 

esque and the beautiful. 

Twachtman trained the direct observation of the 
eye without the added intellectual interest or associa- 
tion ofidea. With color he believed that the eye saw 
more truly when the mind was not conversant with 
the nature or local color of the object. He contended 
that children saw the color of objects at a distance more 
truly than adults because they were not conscious of 
the local color of the object. Alluding to this, Mr. 
Charles Curran writes: ‘‘ With his own children he 


=/ 


invented a game of seeing color, standing them in a 
row out of doors and training their sight, not by state- 
ment on his part and implicit belief on theirs, but by 
questions from him which brought out and strength- 
ened their own truthful observation.” 


PART TWO. 


T is interesting to note that Cincinnati was the 
birthplace of several distinguished American ar- 
tists, who were born shortly before or about the timeof 
the Civil War. It is difficult'to conceive that the time 
or the place were particularly propitious for the culti 
vation of artistic genius, and it may be asserted that the - 
gifted ones were wise enough to seek other environ: 
ment. It may also be remarked that these artists were 
of German origin. Whether it was that beer brought 
many Germans to Cincinnati or that Germans culti- 
vated the fine arts will not be debated, but it must be 
observed that our artists of German heritage have 
shown little of the traditional influence of German art 
and its particular predilections in color and form. 

It was in Cincinnati that John Henry Twachtman 
was bornon August fourth, eighteen hundred and fif 
ty-three. His forbears were prosperous farmers, liv- 
ing in the little town of Erichagen in the free State of 
Hanover, Germany. That his people were held in 
local esteem was evinced by the fact that when Naz 
poleon passed through their country Twachtman’s 
grandfather was one of a committee of three appoint- 
ed to meet him. Conditions becoming unfavorable, 


18 


partly due to political changes, Twachtman’s father, 
Frederick Christian Twachtman came to America 
where he settled in Cincinnati and where he later 
married Sophia Droege also from the province of Han- 
over. There the elder Twachtman gained his liveli- 
hood by working in a window shade factory. The 
decorative embellishment of the shade, which was 
then fashionable, prompted the son to try his hand at 
painting, and encouraged by his father he supple- 
mented his practice by studying art at the night school 
of the Mechanics Institute and later at the Cincinnati 
School of Design where Frank Duveneck was instruct- 
ing. The family of Duveneck were old friends of the 
Twachtmans and hailed from the same country in 
Hanover. Duveneck, five years older than Twacht- 
man, studied in Munich from eighteen seventy to eigh- 
teen seventy-three. As the painter of ‘'The Whist- 
ling Boy”, ‘‘ Woman with a Fan” and ‘Portrait of 
Professor Ludwig Loefftz”, he was already an accom- 
plished master. Proclaimed among the younger paint- 
ersin Munichit was not, however, surprising that his 
work was unappreciated in the provincial city of his 
birth where he gave an exhibition of his Munich pic- 
tures on his return in 1873. It was not until the mem- 
orable year, 1875, when he showed his work in Boston 
that Duveneck met with immediate and unqualified 
success. This at once determined him to return to 
Munich. Interested in Twachtman, not merely as his 
instructor, but on account of friendly family relations, 
recognizing the aptitude of the younger painter, and 


~~ 


knowing from experience of the favorable conditions 
for development in the more sympathetic environ- 
ment abroad, Duveneck advised Twachtman to rez 
turn with him to Munich. 

It was a memorable experience. I well recall 
Duveneck’s glowing account of the voyage. Young, 
ambitious and talented, the world of experience and 
promise mysteriously loomed before him. He wore 
a gray stovepipe hat and when he stepped on board 
the ship, he said: ‘‘Why! Rubens isn’t in it.” His 
mother had filled the extra spaces in his traveling bags 
with goodies, and she being a good old time German 
housewife, when the bags were opened, the savory 
sauerkraut and limburger smelled to heaven. Sailing 
from New York in 1875, the young couple landed in 
Hanover and immediately proceeded to their old 
home town where they spent some little time feast- 
ing with their respective families. 

At Munich Twachtman studied under Ludwig 
Loefftz, who had previously been a fellow student of 
Duveneck at the Royal Academy under Wilhelm 
Dietz. The artistic atmosphere of Munich at this time 
was most sympathetic and exhilarating. The younger 
painters, freed from the somewhat grandiose artifici- 
alities of their predecessors, were vitalized by thenew 
spirit of realism which had been stirring in France. 
Insisting on the individual and first hand observation 
of the subject, the movement was technically a return 
to direct painting. One can imagine what a wonder: 
ful experience it was for the youth from the new 


20 





“ 


a 





world. Coming from a provincial city where every: 
one was engrossed in commerce, with no historical 
or traditional background and little culture, it must 
have been a marvelous mecca for an impressionable 
youth. The training was of inestimable value. Sur- 
rounded by brilliant and enthusiastic craftsmen, 
studying the great masters in the Pinakothek and liv- 
ing in an environment reflecting Continental culture, 
Twachtman, naturally receptive, reacted to the artis- 
tic impulse of the time. 

Remaining in Munich two years, Twachtman 
joined Duveneck and Chase at Venice where he 
worked during the following year. Numerous stud: 
ies of this period bear witness to the industry of the 
painter, and much of the time was passed out of doors 
along the waterways of the picturesque city. 

In 1878 Twachtman returned to America. Several 
of his canvases, fortunately dated, tell us of his being 
in New York in’7o, and a little later we find him at 
Cincinnati, where he painted a number of interest- 
ing pictures in the neighboring country of Avondale. 
In the fall of 1880 he sailed again for Europe, passing 
the winter in Florence where Duveneck the year 
previous had settled witha group of American pupils, 
who had followed him from Munich. Little pictorial 
record of this second experience abroad remains to 
inform us of his study. Norbert Heermann, in his in- 
teresting little book on Duveneck, in speaking of this 
sojourn in Florence, quotes Oliver Dennett Grover 
who was working with Duveneck at that time, ‘‘The 


21 


advice of John Twachtman, of the Cincinnati contin- 
gent, one of the older ones, whose knowledge was 
wider, was appreciated next to that of the ‘Old Man’, 
as they lovingly denominated Duveneck. The stu- 
dent days in Italy were all too short, but while they 
lasted, they were more significant, probably, than a 
similar period in the lives of most students because 
more intensified, more concentrated. The usual stuz 
dent experiences of work and play, elation and dejec- 
tion, feast and famine, were ours, of course, but in 
addition to that, and owing to peculiar circumstances 
and conditions, the advantage of the intimate associa- 
tion and constant companionship we enjoyed not only 
with our leader but also with his acquaintances and 
fellow artists, men and women from many lands, was 
unique and perhaps quite as valuable as any. actual 
school work. We lived in adjoining rooms, dined in 
the same restaurant, frequented the same cafes, 
worked and played together with an intimacy only 
possible to that age and such a community of inter: 
ests.” Duveneck had been for a short time in Rome 
and naively told Twachtman that it was really worth 
while seeing. So the latter was induced to make a 
brief journey thither. But there was nothing of the 
sentimental sight-seer about Twachtman, and he was 
more interested in the living world and visual impres- 
sions than in historical associations. 

In the spring of 81 we find Twachtman again in 


America, and shortly afterward he married Marthe 
Scudder, daughter of Jane Hannah and John Milton 


22 


Scudder, the well known physician and writer, who 
for many years was head of the Eclectic Medical 
School. 

The same season the newly married couple went 
abroad, first visiting London, and then spending a 
short time in Dordrecht. Here they met J. Alden 
Weir, his brother, John Weir, and Walter Shirlaw. 
It was from this short stay in Holland that our painter 
gathered material fora number of pictures and several 
etchings in which windmills figure conspicuously. It 
was here toothat Twachtman met Anton Mauve and 
was much pleased with the encouraging criticism of 
his work. Twachtman then returned to Munich and 
made a sketching trip to the neighboring town of 
Schleisheim where he painted a number of large can- 
vases directly from nature, pictures which attest the 
artist's facile use of the brush, and in which the pre- 
vailing low toned browns of the Munich formula are 
much in evidence. After a short visit in Venice the 
painter and his wife returned to New York. 

Their stay in America was, however, of comparaz 
tively short duration. Feeling that the environment 
was more stimulating and sympathetic abroad and 
wishing to continue his technical studies, Twachtman 
returned to Europe in 1883. This time he settled in 
Paris. The change wasadecisive one. Coming under 
the influence of the younger school of France, his ap- 
preciation of light and values was awakened, and the 
bituminous palette of Munich was discarded for the 
cooler hues of the open air. A fellow student tells us 


25 


of his impressions of that time: ‘tAs far back as 1883 
when I knew Twachtman at Paris he impressed me 
as being a painter de race. His clear eye, straight 
nose flanked by sensitive nostrils, curved moustache 
and trimmed beard, evoked I know not what souve- 
nir of Van Dyke and Rubens. Convinced and serious 
in his views, he carried with him a certain atmosphere 
of Romanticism, acquired possibly during his earlier 
sojourn in Munich. He was then working under 
Lefevre and Boulanger at the Julien atelier, and his 
academic work was supplemented by study of the 
Old Masters at the Louvre, where, in the intervals of 
classes at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, I was similarly 
occupied. At noon we usually went to a nearby res- 
taurant where questions relating to art, ancient and 
modern, would be discussedover biftecks aux pommes 
and vin ordinaire.” Another friend, speaking of the 
same period, writes: ‘‘Le Fevre used to invite his 
most promising pupils to his private studio on Sunday 
mornings to talk painting, and to see any of their work 
done outside the school. It was a stimulus and a pleas- 
ure to him to receive this recognition of his work, 
done on his own initiative.” 

In the summer Twachtman spent some time at 
Honfleur, where Homer Martin was staying. The 
two painters, later so disparate in their expression, 
found much in common in their artistic adventures. 
We note reminiscences of this trip in the etchings, 
‘Quay at Honfleur”, “The Mouth of the Seine”, and 


‘Road near Honfleur”, and also a number of small 


24 


pictures of harbor and river subjects. Another sketch- 
ing trip was made to Arque la Battaille, near Dieppe, 
a country finely suited to the delicate style of Twachte 
man, with decorative arrangement of trees, lowlying 
hills and winding river. Some of the finest examples 
of the early period were painted in this vicinity. 

The winter of 84 was passed in Venice. Prepara- 
tory to his return to the States in ’85, the painter had 
shipped many of his canvases in advance. Alas! The 
ill fated ship went down and with it much of the best 
work of Twachtman’s continental experience. 

During the ten years which had elapsed from the 
first trip abroad to his final return to America, 
between the ages of twenty-two and thirty-two, 
Twachtman had notonly acquired a thorough knowl: 
edge of the craft and a splendid understanding of con- 
struction and composition, but had produced a group 
of pictures esteemed by his fellow painters and later 
to be highly prized by appreciative connoisseurs. 

In 1878, shortly after returning from his first trip 
abroad, Twachtman exhibited two pictures at the 
first exhibition of the Society of American Artists, 
held at the Kurtz Gallery, both pictures being Italian 
in subject. In 1879 he was represented by five can- 
vases, three of which were painted abroad. It was 
in this year that he was elected a member of the Soci 
ety. In 1880 he contributed six examples and in 1881, 
1882 and 1883 he was represented by pictures mostly 
of foreign subjects. 

The loss of much of his work at sea was frightfully 


a 


discouraging, and although his pictures were known 
and appreciated by his fellow artists and favorably 
exhibited, they were not of a character to be easily 
negotiated. It was atthis juncture that Mrs. Twacht- 
man’s father suggested that it might be well to com: 
bine landscape painting with farming and offered 
them a house on some land which he owned up north. 
Farming was probably not a very exciting but an ex: 
acting occupation, and Twachtman was very glad to 
accept an unexpected commission to work on one of 
the great warcycloramas then popular, picturing the 
battle of Gettysburg. Twachtman’s particular con- 
tribution was in painting the sky, with bursting 
bombs and the lurid accompaniments of battle. This 
work, though tiresome and uninteresting, was rez 
munerative and kept the painter in Chicago for some 
time. But it was merely amakeshift and Twachtman 
was happy to return east in °88 where he joined his 
old time friend, yi Alden Weir, at Branchville. While 
there, several trips were made to Bridgeport, not far 
distant, where he found many congenial and sympa- 
thetic subjects along the wharves. Severalof these he 
reproduced in etching, and some of his most pictur: 
esque pastels were also made at Bridgeport, notably 
the old ‘‘Foot-Bridge, Bridgeport.” 

In the summer of 89 Twachtman had a small class 
at Newport and was at the same time enabled to do 
some work about the neighboring water front. While 
there a fellow painter spoke very enthusiastically of 
the landscape about Greenwich, Connecticut, and on 


26 








returning T wachtman set out to look over the coun: 
try. He had determined to quit paying rent, to have 
a place of his own, and to live in the environment 
which he wished to paint. | 

Before the time of the commuter and costly sum- 
mer estates the country about Greenwich was quite 
natural and charming. Following the road westward 
Twachtman came upon a little farm about two miles 
distant. The beauty of the spot determined the painter 
and he at once made arrangements to acquire it. It 
was in this favored situation that he settled in the fall 
of 1889, and there during the next ten years most of 
his best pictures were painted. 

Within easy reach of New York Twachtman 
combined the joy of being in the country with the 
association and the activities of the city. The Players 
Club was a favorite rendezvous in those days, and 
there he gathered with his intimate friends, Weir, 
Hassam, Metcalf, Reid, Simmons, Carlsen, and others 
of a notable group of painters. It was at this time also 
that he accepted an offer to instruct the antique class 
at the Art Students League, a position which he held 
during the remaining years of his life. Twachtman 
made of teaching rather a congenial occupation, for 
to students who were not responsive to his artistic 
dictum he paid little attention, and rather than urge 
them on he was frankly discouraging; whereas with 
those aesthetically inclined, he established at once an 
artistic camaraderie and imparted his criticism with 
interest and feeling. His comment was often sarcastic 


ay 


and biting, and frequently irrelevant and unconstruc- 
tive, depending much upon the mood of the moment. 

here was an appreciable silence when his nervous, 
agilefigure appeared at thedoor, andbeginning always 
at the further end of the room, the duty of the day 
was dispatched. 

From his anchorage at Round Hill Twachtman 
made several excursions further afield. While visit- 
ing Mr. Charles Carey of Buffalo, he made several 
pictures of Niagara Falls, and as a result of this asso- 
ciation he was commissioned by Major W. A.Wads- 
worth of that city to paint a series of pictures of Yel: 
lowstone Park. 

Later we find the painter spending the summers at 
Gloucester, returning to his much loved subjects of 
houses, wharves and shipping. Duveneck was there 
and de Camp and Corwin of Florentine days. One 
cannot say it was an intellectual group. There was 
little reminiscing and less artistic speculation. The 
glamour had passed. There was much joking and jol- 
lying, sarcasm and irony. Duveneck occasionally 
started a canvas, but he lacked the interest and will to 
continue it. Twachtman worked constantly. It was 
a form of exhilaration. But his mental impulse was 
not as vigorous as his visual. He started many canz 
vases and enjoyed the initial attack, but it had become 
more difficult for him to sustain the aesthetic effort. 
There seemed something gnawing at the soul of the 
man, and for one who was approaching fifty some: 
thing curiously uncertain and restless. Never robust 


28 


in physique he did not care for himself as his nature 
required. His vitality became weakened, and when 
illness came, he was not sufficiently strong to over: 
come it. He died at Gloucester in the month of July, 
1902. He was survived by his wife and five children. 


PART THREE 


HE painting of John Twachtman may be classi- 

fied in three periods, in each of which we observe 
a radically different style and treatment. The first we 
may associate with the Munich School; the second 
derives from France and Holland; while the final and 
mature period belongs to America. One does not 
seem to grow out of the other; it is rather a reaction 
from the other. But each manner is thoroughly con- 
sistent within itself. We never feel at any time that 
uncertainty or confusion of purpose and that techni- 
cal solecism which is its result. 

The great contrast between the early work of 
Twachtman and his mature expression can only be 
explained by studying the larger art movement with 
which his work is associated. It is, in brief, the con- 
trast between the Munich School of the seventies and 
the Parisian School of Impressionism of the nineties ; 
the contrast between the dark, colorless, but strongly 

ainted canvases which reflect the sombreness of the 
north and the light, airy and vibrant canvases which 
one associates with sunshine and the south. 

Although we can thus simply and briefly classify 


the work of Twachtman, it is at once apparent in his 


net 


earliest canvases that he was gifted with an instince- 
tive artistic sensibility and a very personal viewpoint. 
This is observed not only in his brushwork, butin his 
singleness of vision and purpose, which is undoubted: 
ly the origin of good brushwork. There is a direct- 
ness, a freedom of touch and a certain command and 
authority in the early painting of Twachtman, which 
if it does not indicate the future way of the painter 
indicates at once that he is a painter. It is not merely 
the result of clever and superficial brushing; itis not 
merely a mannerism; butit implies aclarity of vision, 
a comprehension of things seen and an instinctive 
ability in reducing them to simple and expressive pic- 
torial forms. 

Little of the work of the very early Cincinnati 
period remains to reveal the effort and influence of the 
adolescent painter. We have a photograph of a pic: 
ture entitled ‘‘Tuckerman’s Ravine”, dated 1873, 
owned by Louis Twachtman, brother of the painter. 
The title does not suggest the picture; nor does the 
picture suggest the painter. Great mountain peaks 
rise in the background, in front of which is a placid 
lake, bordered by gnarled and time worn trees. The 
subject was probably suggested by other pictures; the 
mountains have no structural form, and the picture is 
of interest merely as being a very early example of the 
artist. | 

The work executed between seventy-five and 
eighty is dominated by the Munich influence and 
Twachtman’s association with Duveneck. The conz- 


30 








trast of light and dark is exaggerated; the color is sub- 

dued, in variations of brown and black; the paint is 
applied heavily and with an unctuous, fatty quality 
due to a free use of varnish. The brushwork is vigor- 
ous, impulsive, direct and expressive. The pictures 
of this period are mostly small in size and intimate in 
conception. It is to be noted even at this early time 
that the motives are derived from direct observation. 
There is no endeavor to make the subject poetically 
picturesque, or to embellish through added details and 
associations the particular aspect of a place. His pic- 
tures have, therefore, local character. 

Some of the best canvases of this period were 
painted at Venice. The picturesque buildings, the 
waterways, the shipping along the Guidecca gave the 
painter a splendid opportunity to display his sense of 
design, and he is more personal in these small decora- 
tive panels than in the more ambitious landscapes of 
the same time. Twachtman had a very happy faculty 
of arrangement without seeming or studied effort, the 
effect of which was to strengthen the salient charac: 
teristics of the subject and give it a significance singu- 
lar to itself. There isa splendid sense of architectonic 
balance, a fine appreciation of spacing, that gives to 
these little pictures an air of distinction and style. 
Twachtman showed some of these early canvases 
later in life and alluded to them as being as ‘‘black as 
your hat”. The Boston Museum has an example, en- 
titled ‘Italian Landscape”, dated Venice’78. Although 
painted in sunlight as indicated by the shadows, it is 


31 


dark in key and brown in tone. The technique is 
spirited and facile, following the Munich formula. 

Most of the pictures of this time are in the propor 
tion of three by five, a proportion then more frequent- 
ly used than later. But the interesting Venice” with 
the Dogana high in the canvas and the distant San 
Giorgio is more in the proportion of five by six. 

In speaking of this period of Twachtman’s work, 
Carolyn Mase writes: ‘‘Once I recollect his showing 
me a brownish-black water color, reeking with all 
the colors that nature does not show. ‘That’, he said 
with a chuckle, ‘is sunny Venice, done under the in- 
fluence of the Munich School.” If, however, the out 
ward aspect of the early pictures savors of the brown 
sauce of Munich, the true content of the composition, 
the aesthetic conception is distinctive and personal. 
There is nothing of the picture making pattern, the 
standardized and purely conventional composition. 
Taught the use of paints and a formularized mode of 
mixing, T'wachtman uses them for his own purpose. 
Several of these smaller canvases in the possession of 
Mrs. Twachtman show a very sensitive aesthetic 
sense and a deliberate and conscious conception of de- 
sign. His association with Duveneck was of inestima: 
ble value, particularly from a technical standpoint, 
but in subject and composition it is noticeable that we 
see little trace of his earlier master. 

On returning to the States it was no doubt difficult 
for the painter to adjust himself to new surroundings 
and a less sympathetic environment. In New York, 


32 


however, he at once seized upon the pictorial possibil- 
ities of the harbor withits shipping, docks and bridges. 
We recall a picture dated ‘N.Y. 79”, in which fish- 
ing boats with sails furled are lying at the docks, the 
upright repetition of the masts contrasted by angular 
wooden houses in the background. The painter has 
very happily contrived forms which are aesthetically 
stimulating, and at the same time are made to express 
most intensely the purely graphic elements of the sub: 
ject. In technique it is a veritable ‘tour de force”. 
The painter never realized his subject with greater 
command of brush. The arrangement which does 
not suggest deliberate composing is nevertheless nice- 
ly calculated and characterizes the subject with pic- 
turesque and striking effect. When we reflect that at 
this time Manet was startling his Parisian public by 
the frank realization of the intimate life about him, 
we must recognize that the realism of Twachtman 
must have appeared most blatant to the blinking eyes 
of his American contemporaries. 

Likewise, in his little picture of Brooklyn Bridge, 
Twachtman has revealed the pictorial possibilities of 
modern mechanical construction, and a theme which 
might so temptingly have been used to parade the 
great engineering achievement of the new world and 
display with pride its imposing grandeur Twachtman 
treats casually, with a sense of familiarity and a dis: 
cerning understanding of its aesthetic significance. 

Many of the landscapes of this time, that is, be- 
tween "79 and 83, were painted at Avondale, near 


33 


Cincinnati. In these little canvases we sense the con- 
sciousness of rhythm, the flow of line, the significant 
spacing, which later became the distinguishing char- 
acteristic of Twachtman’s art. The contrast between 
sky and ground is enforced, thus emphasizing the sky 
line. The resulting silhouette is treated with great 
consideration and distinction. Therein we perceive 
the particular penchant of the painter. If later his 
color,value relations and handling change completely, 
we will find that his sense of design, of silhouette, of 
line, in short, the purely constructive elements of the 
picture are unfolded along the lines of his early efforts. 
The angle of vision is extended, the composition ob- 
long, the attention concentrated on the distance, the 
middle ground often vacant and structurally rather 
thin, but the significant relation of form is apparent. 
In Germany he attempted a number of large land- 
scapes painted out of doors, and repeated the perform: 
ance at home, but the result is not felicitous. Strong 
and expressive in technique, the effect is over obvious. 
Commonplace in conception, they lack the charm of 
Twachtman’s spirit. ‘The Valley”, painted in 1882, 
is one of the largest pictures of the Avondale period. 
The trees are in full foliage, the color scheme dark 
green and pray, the painting full and vigorous, but 
the composition somewhat overburdened. We also 
recall several smaller pictures, oblong compositions 
in which it is noticeable that the heavy unctuous pig- 
ment of Munich has given place to a thin, flowing 
brush, a manner which he continues to use later in 


Ris 


France. Thus we may note the winter pictures of 
Avondale with a hint of the dramatic in the dull over- 
cast sky and the dark winding brook against the white 
snow or distant country in angular perspective; quite 
different in mood from the delicate ethereallandscapes 
of a later time; or the picture entitled ‘‘ Nutting” with 
its splendid decorative silhouette; the very artistic 
little **Coney Island” with its unusually effective spac- 
ing; and many other examples which show the active 
observation and keen descriptiveinsightof the painter. 
The sojourn in France was most significant in the 
artistic career of our painter. Coming at a time when 
he had achieved something ofa mastery of hismedium, 
and still in an impressionable and formative state, 
Twachtman was able to appreciate and assimilate the 
most conctructive influences of thetime. The artistic 
circles of Paris were then agitated by the advent of the 
so called Impressionists, whose first collective exhibi- 
tion was held in 1874. Manet died in 1883, the year 
of the arrival of our painter, and in 1884 a memorial 
exhibition of his work wasgiven atthe Ecoledes Beaux 
Arts. Monet, then forty-three years of age, was pro- 
ducing some of his finest canvases. Bastien Le Page, 
whose naturalism and scientific study of values had a 
dominant influence in his day, diedin 1884. The Bar- 
bizon painters had been proclaimed and officially 
crowned. Rousseau diedin 1867; Corot and Milletin 
1875; Diazin 1876; Daubigny in 1878; Dupre in 1889. 
Courbet, the great inaugurator of the realistic move- 
ment, whose art was not so popular, partly on account 


35 


of its objective and unsentimental approach and partly 
- for politicalreasons,was, nevertheless, agrowing force 
among the virile and vigorous painters of the period. 
Courbet died in 1878. Whistler was an international 
figure. The famous Ruskin trial was heldin 1877. The 
portrait of the artist's mother, shown at the Royal 
Academy in 1872, was awarded a gold medal in the 
Salon of 1844 and purchased by the Luxembourg. 
Paris had become the undisputed center of painting, 
and the youth of the world flocked thither to assimilate 
her teaching. 

For Twachtman, then just thirty years ofage it was 
acritical and decisive training. A painter friend of that 
time writes: ‘‘A cult of the precise realism of Bastien 
Lepage was then tempering the classical teachings of 
the Academy, and a somewhat clandestine admiraz 
tion already existed for the impressionism of Manet 
and Monet. Twachtman wished to clear his palette 
from the bituminous tones of Munich, to strengthen his 
power of precise design, and altogether to freshen his 
ideas in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Paris. At the 
same time, analysisofoldermasters, suchas Velasquez, 
and of works by the great landscapists, both ancient 
and modern, confirmed him in basic principles. Whis- 
tler’s art also influenced him, as well as that of the 
Givernay master, Claude Monet.” It is noteworthy 
that Twachtman, already accomplished as a painter, 
should work humbly at Julien’s under Academic mas- 
ters. But he wished to create a strong foundation for 
the future and attain in drawing and the construction 


36 


of the figure something of the facility which he had 
attained in painting. 

The picturesof the Parisian period, 1883-1885, show 
little influence in color or method of the impressionis- 
tic practice, but they are quite opposed to the Munich 
formula. In contrast to the earlier palette of browns 
and blacks, of unctuous impasto, and powerful brush- 
ing, the French pictures are characterized by a deli- 
cate technique, a close study of relative values, simpli 
fication of forms, anda cool gray colorscheme. Thecan- 
vasisa fine French linen; the pigmentis applied thinly 
with sure but sympathetic touch. Many of the mo- 
tives introduce water, showing scenes along the Seine 
or the waterways of Holland. There is seldom an at- 
tempt at sunlight so that the gray lines of the clouded 
sky and its reflections dominate the color scheme. The 
composition is restricted to very simple themes, most 
of which depend upon the nice placing of the horizon 
within the choosen proportions of thecanvas; the spot- 
ting of a group of trees in the middle ground effective- 
ly breaking thesky or the simple line of river banklead- 
ing into the picture. The form is rendered in simple 
flat contour; the composition is long; the first plane is 
in the immediate foreground, and the perspective is 
limited. We observe the facile and sympathetic treat: 
ment of field flowers, grasses and foreground forms, 
which later were rendered so exquisitely in pastel. 
The color, in variations of silvery grays and greens, is 
suggestive of Bastien Le Page, but thetendencytoward 


ry! 


decorative spacing and simplification is reminiscent of 
Whistler. 

One of the most distinguished and representative 
pictures of this period, and at the same time one of the 
largest of the painter's works, is the ‘‘Arque la Bat- 
taille,” painted from a smaller study, at Paris, in 1855. 
Simple in theme, it is most decorative in effect; delicate 
and sensitive in painting, it has splendid force and car- 
rying power. Init the painter has completely summed 
up his expression of that time. Itis aconsummation. A 
barren hillside runs horizontally across the upper por- 
tion of the picture, broken only by an effective clump 
of trees in simple silhouette against a gray moisture 
laden sky, reflected in the placid stream below. The 
soft, grass grown river bank breaks the left foreground, 
from the center of which tall picturesque water grasses 
rise against the mirrored hillside. Still, sad and serene, 
the river; fateful and melancholy, the hillside; delicate 
and sensitive, the fragile river weeds. It typifies the 
river country of northern France. In the land of no 
other people will one find the same wistful, melan- 
choly beauty, the same enchanting, indescribable 
charm. The colorisin tones of gray, gray green, gray 
violet and brown. It is thinly painted, with flowing 
brush, directly and freely. The foreground is a mas- 
terful performance, in which the painter has displayed 
both skill and feeling. There is a lovely sense of sur- 
face, and a discerning differentiation of quality in the 
softness of the grass, the fragility of the rushes and the 
placidity of limpid waters. The treatment of edges is 


38 


extremely subtle and sensitive, soft and refracted, yet 
sure and solid. Note in particular the contour of the 
river bank against the light water, suggestive and al- 
luring, with a sense of going over; and note also the 
consummate skill in the treatment of the rushes and 
the constructural beauty of form. 

‘The Windmills,” also of this period and of similar 
dimensions, is a most felicitous arrangement, wherein 
we find a very exact adjustment of the relative posi: 
tions of masses and the division ofareas. Gray in tone, 
the effect is produced by light and dark, rather than 
color. We remark again the picture plane beginning 
in the immediate foreground and the skilfull treatment 
of rushes and flowers. Executed with technical mas: 
tery and quite perfect in presentation, the composition 
is, however, rather over obvious and insufficient in 
volume to fill such a large canvas. Thismay be due to 
the fact that the large pictures were painted after 
smaller studies and in losing something of their inti- 
macy do not gain in grandeur. 

Thus we see in the small canvas, ‘‘Canal Boats”, 
from which the etching, ‘‘Mouth of the Seine,” was 
drawn, a more satisfactory filling of space relative to 
the dimensions of the canvas, andacorresponding con- 
centration of effect. Theincisive use of the brush, the 
effective disposition of the darks, the simple but de- 
scriptive outline of the distant woods, make this pic- 
ture one of the most striking products of the period. 
Similar in tonal theme is the ‘‘Sketch” in the Boston 
Museum. The composition is squarer in proportion, 


39 


with rather low horizon; a group of dark barges 
against the river bank at the right, and a French vil- 
lage breaking the distant sky line. The painting is 
hardly more than a thin wash. The river, reflecting 
a gray clouded sky, in which the attention is centered 
in a picturesque row of poplar trees on the opposite 
shore paralleling the picture plane, again figures con- 
spicuously in “*L’Etang”. The‘tLandscape”, formerly 
owned by Mr. Montross, is a characteristic example, 
simple in the treatment of line, and decorative in the 
spotting of the mass. Very thinly painted, it has al- 
most the aspect of water color. 

_The'* Winding Path” which we know only in pho- 
tograph, painted in 1885 at Arque la Battaille, is an 
important canvas. More ingratiating and poetical in 
theme, it is less typical of the artist's style. Almost 
panoramic in extent, it introduces a distant perspec: 
tive uncommon in the artist's composition. 

Other pictures of the French period show an intense 
interest in the significance of line, the simplification 
of form, a freedom from conventional composition, 
and a decorative sense of arrangement. The color is 
restrained, the effect is produced by a simple relation 
of tones. The contour is studied with precision; the 
painting is thin with no indication of suggestive tex- 
tures. With a predilection for the tender effects of 
gray and a pervading sense of melancholy, the pre- 
vailing sentiment of the French landscapes is one of 
intimacy and charm. If we donotfind fullness of form 
or color and their accompanying weight and volume, 


40 


we may rightly say that in their modification the artist 
has intensified the aesthetic charm which he wished 
to express, and it is part of Twachtman’s distinction 
that he respected given limitations and worked with- 
in them. 

PART FOUR 


HE intermediate manner was significant. It rez 

vealed the painter to himself. He saw his nature 
manifested in delicacy rather than strength, in the 
sensitive rather than the striking, in the subtle rather 
than the obvious. 

It is difficult to trace the transitional steps from the 
pictures of the French period to the ultimate develop: 
ment of the painter. Returning to America in 1885, 
the work of the next few years is not prolific or alto- 
gether promising. Burdened with the cares of liveli- 
hood, there was much distraction and interruption. 
In 1887, two landscapes were exhibited at the Soci- 
ety, and the following year six, three of which bear 
foreign titles. It was not, however, until Twachtman 
settled at Greenwich in 1889 that he seems definitely 
to have found himself, and from that time until his 
death in 1902 he produced the series of pictures by 
which he is most universally known and appreciated. 

The choice of location could not have been happi- 
er. It has the charm of not being over obvious. Hid: 
den among the hills, one might pass it by unnoticed. 
But to the artist’s eye was revealed its subtle beauty. 
Before the competition in hedges and park like pal- 
aces, one could see the natural rhythm of the land: 


4I 


scape. The old stone fences rambled over the hills, 
the fields were tilled or used as pasture, the woods 
were thinned for timber, and something of the anato- 
my of the earth could be discerned. Just below the 
artist's house there is a lovely little brook, winding 
merrily in and out, sometimes revealing its quickened 
beauty as it tumbles over the rocks, and then flowing 
silently between grass covered banks. It is surround: 
ed by picturesque trees, sentinels of an earlier time, 
before the advent of farm or woodman; lonely now, 
perhaps, when lawns encroach upon their loveliness. 
Here within his own grounds Twachtman pro- 
_duced his finest canvasses. There is a feeling of home 
in his pictures, of a country well beloved. The paint: 
er has, as it were, become a part of the thing painted. 
We feel a perfect intimacy, which comes from per- 
fectunderstanding. Not descriptive in a purely graph- 
ic or illustrative sense, the pictures of Connecticut 
reveal the type and character of the country, its near- 
ness, its friendliness, its peculiarly intimate charm. It 
is not the loneliness of great expanse, nor the rugged 
dramatic power of nature that Twachtman portrays, 
but rather tranquility and repose, and the interest of 
nearby landscape made significant by the way in 
which it is seen and composed. Thus the neighboring 
pool, the little waterfall, the undulating stone fence, 
the outcropping rocks and the varicolored fields as- 
sume an importance which elevates the commonplace 
to the realm of profound beauty. The human figure 
is seldom introduced, although we frequently see a 


42 








neighboring house and indications of human pres: 
ence; but whether directly indicated or not, the hu- 
man interest looms large in the presence of the spec: 
tator who, as it were, occupies the foreground and 
shares the interest of the artist. 

The later work is essentially tonal. The color is rez 
lated to values and the values to light. The local color 
is modified by the dominant hue of the atmosphere 
in which the form is enveloped and refracted. But 
Twachtman was not a luminist in the full sense of 
the term. He preferred the diffused light of hazy 
days, or the gray days of autumn, to the blatant ef: 
fects of sunlight and its corresponding contrasts. In 
fact, most of his color schemes are harmonies where- 
in the color manifests entirely relative to the predom- 
inant hue. He expressed the elusive and fascinatingly 
evasive effects of nature; the delicate modulations of 
a simple theme, brought together by subtly combined 
variations and textures. He was a master of nuance. 
His interest in winter landscape was, therefore, natz 
ural. He has rendered the aesthetic beauties of snow 
rather than the rigour of winter; he discovered the 
beauty of closely related values and softly modulated 
forms under clouded skies; but he did not record the 
brilliant sunshine and the crisp, clear days of New 
England winter. Chiaroscuro is not employed as an 
element in composition or as a means of engendering a 
mood. The illumination is universal and not focused. 
Twachtman never endeavored to suggest in paint the 
fascination of illimitable perspective or the transcen- 


43 


dental mood engendered thereby. On the contrary, 
his viewpoint is seldom in the distance; he designs 
with known quantities against simply related planes, 
and he seems instinctively to see in nature its pictor- 
ial value in terms of color and form rather than the 
associative idea. He had not a romantic reverence 
for nature. The subjects which had inspired his pred: 
ecessors were to him merely sentimental. The awe 
inspiring grandeur of primitive nature was of little 
significance; scenic splendor and the sublimity of vast- 
ness and expanse awakened no responsive chord. 
The simple linear spacing of the earlier works has 
developed into more subtle and less apparent design; 
the contrast of horizontal and upright has given place 
to undulating masses and rhythmic interchange of 
form. The curve becomes significant. The flat thinly 
painted contours of the French period are followed 
by an evasive sense of form, suggested rather than 
defined. The edges are carefully lost and found with 
a resulting effect of volume, The painter is continu- 
ally experimenting with space relations and varies 
the proportions of his canvas to carry out his sche- 
maticintention. Occasionally we see a decided oblong, 
nearly in the proportion of one to two; but more genz 
erally the composition is spaced within a square pro- 
portion, the skyline being placed high in the canvas, 
so that the eye does not travel beyond, but is arrested 
and entertained in the middle ground. Twachtman 
was, in fact, one of the first of our landscape painters 
to use the square canvas, and the new possibilities 


44 


of spacing within an untried proportion resulted in 
many interesting innovations in design. 

The mood is one of intimacy and charm. The 
spectator shares with the painter the exhilaration of 
the moment, the feeling that each motive is a new 
discovery. One senses the animation of artistic ad: 
venture, the delight in the search for the beautiful. 
Twachtman has shown us the country in the dress 
of different seasons, but perhaps the most appealing 
are the neutral hues of November and the snows of 
winter, when the intricate forms of nature are rez 
placed by undulating fields of snow. One can see the 
soft contour of the hills and the rhythmic flow of line: 
the outcropping rocks; the old stone wall that fol- 
lows the easiest way over the hills; or the brook is 
revealed winding in and out of snow covered banks, 
and withered brambles remind us of the earth under- 
neath. Naturalistic accuracy of detail is subordinat- 
ed to more universal relations, and the impression is 
produced by suggestion rather than by objective de: 
lineation. 

Twachtman was, however, interested particularly 
in the delicate and ethereal manifestations of winter, 
when the snow is revealed by a hidden radiance or 
softly falling, dims the distant landscape. Typical of 
this effect is the ‘‘Round Hill Road” in the Evans col: 
lection at Washington. The country, snow covered, 
is veiled in ambient atmosphere, and the distance is 
almost lost in the moisture laden sky. Within a 
square canvas the road winds to the right, forming a 


45 


high embankment at the top of which a stone wall 
rambles down the hill, while poplar trees form a dec: 
orative sequence, winding into the distance. The val: 
ues are closely related. The technique is suggestive 
of soft surfaces and flowing forms. Inthe ‘Snow”, at 
the Worcester Museum, we see a similar effect in 
elusive grays, but in a more static composition. Un- 
der a barren hill in light contour against a dull sky a 
simple house with snow covered roof occupies the 
center of the canvas, the dark barn like door forming 
an effective contrast to the snow covered fields. Slen- 
der trees break the horizontal line of the roof. The 
pigment is applied in a heavy under painting, over 
which the darks of the trees and rocks are rendered 
with a facile wash. There is a sense of silence and 
serenity in the almost naive and simple conception of 
the subject. 

It is interesting to compare this picture with the 
“Old Mill in Winter”, wherein we see the same sub 
ject from a little further viewpoint. But the concep- 
tion is quite different. The hill and house, instead of 
being placed directly against the sky, appear in front 
of a wooded distance, which is high in the composi- 
tion. The brook just below the foreground embank- 
ment creates a contrast, leading into the picture, 
where the open door again gives an emphatic touch. 
In the first picture the impression is one of austere sol: 
itude; in the second picture there is a sense of friendly 
protection and association expressed in the flowing 
line of stream and hills. Thus we see the painter 


46 








| 
| 


evolving entirely different themes from similar pic- 
torial material. It is also interesting, relative to the 
natural aspect of the subject, to note how the artist 
has added or taken away trees to quicken his aesthet- 
ic expression, but has, nevertheless, in both pictures 
preserved the fundamentally local character of the 
landscape. 

The picture of snow in the Boston Museum entitled 
February” is conceived within an oblong propor- 
tion. Here again we have the simple relation of neu- 
tral hues and an even diffused light without shadows 
or contrasts. A brook winds below undulating fields 
of snow, above which evergreens stand against a 
clouded sky. The surface quality is produced by 
heavy underpainting, over which the tree forms are 
deftly drawn. The grouping of the trees is not alto: 
gether happy, overcrowding the center of the com- 
position and allowing the eye to run out of the un- 
decorated area at the right. The rocky embankment 
across the stream is splendidly constructed, and the 
sense of intricate forms among the trees where the 
brook descends is effectively suggested. The subject, 
seemingly unpictorial, has through intimate appreci- 
ation become imbued with vital significance. 

In the picture called “‘Snowbound”, the artist has 
chosen his theme just below his studio. Under the 
snow embankment of the encircling hills the running 
stream cuts its way, creating curious forms of white 
against its darker background. The painter has ex- 
pressed with unassuming air and perfect simplicity 


aif 


the intimate charm of secluded hills and the way- 
ward course of unconcerned waters. The slender 
trees seem to have been added later. The value conz 
trast of nature is modified, so that dark uprights shall 
not disturb the pristine purity of almost ethereal snow 
forms, but their introduction is not entirely an organ- 
ized part of the composition. 

In the pictures of snow we find the distinctive at- 
tribute in the utterly unaffected simplicity of charac: 
terization. Entirely uninfluenced by the standardized 
conception of composition and what a subject should 
be to make a picture, Twachtman takes the most 
homely theme and makes it interesting by bringing 
out its essential characteristics. 

The pictures of autumn we associate with gray 
days and modified hues, rather than the more vivid 
and apparent colors of that season. Here again 
Twachtman avoids the obvious and the spectacular. 
We do not recall a frankly blue sky or a contrasting 
orange so typical of autumn. But he does not con- 
tinue the brown tones of his predecessors. Painted in 
a higher key, the russet colors of autumn are apparent 
only by relation to the dominant cool palette. There 
is a delicate bloom which pervades the color scheme, 
bringing to the landscape an ethereal charm. Typical 
of the late autumn season and the artist's mood is the 
‘Hemlock Pool”. Twachtman considered it one of 
his best canvases. Without aiming at the poetic, it is 
imbued with the essence of poetry; without thinking 
of picture making, the painter has revealed the pic- 


48 


turesque. Simple, suggestive and serene, the ‘‘Hem- 
lock Pool” is a magical revelation of hidden beauty, 
made apparent by the sympathetic eye of the painter. 
Painted just below the artist’s house, a supreme char- 
acterization of a local situation, the picture makes, 
nevertheless, a universal appeal. 

The landscape of summer is not so frequently renz 
dered. The problem of greens is reduced to a modi- 
fied hue, rather than the full intensity of the pigment. 
More sympathetic to the summer mood was the sea 
haze, the harbor and the reflected coolness of summer 
skies. We recall, however, several interesting color 
schemes in late afternoon light, when the green in 
shadow has a delightful bluish tone and the sunlight 
is golden hued. Most important of the landscapes in 
the season of green is the large canvas entitled ‘‘Sum- 
mer”, now in the collection of Mr. Duncan Phillips. 
It is an interesting problem in design and local char- 
acterization, revealing the contour of long rolling 
hillside, the gradual uphill road, the house with slop- 
ing roof, the flying clouds and fleeting shadows, all 
brought together in a manner which not merely dis- 
closes the general topography of the country, but 
brings to it an indefinable and sympathetic charm 
which is inspired by the painter's personal concep- 
tion. The color scheme is in cool gray greens and 
gray blue. 

Painting directly from his subject and dependent 
upon nature for suggestive impulse and stimulation, 
Twachtman’s later work, however, becomes more 


a 


consciously synthetic and deliberately organized. 
From the realistic influence of impressionism and the 
doctrine of atmospheric illusion the artist comes to 
appreciate the more abstract significance of design 
and to use it as acreative means of expression. This 
evolution of the aesthetic idea is interestingly illus- 
trated in the series of waterfalls which Twachtman 
painted just below his house at Greenwich. The first 
studies are the most naturalistic, studies of a particular 
waterfall having the ordinary aspect of the ordinary 
waterfall. Later, the forms are enlarged and simpli- 
fied, the angle of vision is reduced, the perspective is 
limited, a single aspect is pictured, and the action of 
the water is represented, not by a faithful and nat- 
uralistic rendering of the surface qualities of water, 
but by selecting the most expressive forms and so 
arranging the design that these forms are an integral 
and structural part of the composition. The waterfall 
in the nearby woods thus becomes aesthetically as imz- 
portant as the overwhelming immensity of Niagara. 
The artist has seized the universal in the particular. 
In the Yellowstone Park Twachtman painted sev- 
eral of the vari-colored pools, the falls of the Yellow- 
stone, and the canyon. But these canvases, although 
interesting in color, have not the same intimate charm 
as the more familiar subjects found nearer home. 
Twachtman was evidently not impressed by the gran- 
deur and sublimity of nature, or perhaps thought it 
outside of the limitations of pictorial representation. 
We sense the fact too that he is happier within the 


50 








human habitat, where the presence of man, if not 
indicated, is always suggested. He failed to human- 
ize the Yellowstone, or to bring to it that human 
emotion which might do so, but he brought back 
some splendid bits of color from its opalescent pools 
and radiant waterfalls. His intimate placing of forms 
and his endeavor to see things in a new way are, 
however, not so happy in the presence of great con- 
structive forces where nature has built on a grand 
scale and has patterned everything relative to stress 
and strain. Twachtman was not impressed by that 
elemental power; nor did he attempt to express it. 
He is more purely sensuous in his perception. 

The pictures of Niagara are happier. Here the ter- 
rible and relentless power, the elemental force of naz 
ture, is veiled with mists and the evanescent hues of 
the rainbow. The variations in white, the subtle re- 
lation of values, and the delicate harmonies of closely 
related hues appealed to the painter's aesthetic sensi- 
bility. The rhythmic movement of water, the rez 
peated action of the waves, the rising vapors were 
as the realization of an artistic vision. Twachtman has 
revealed this beauty and showed us something other 
than the largest falls in the world, but he has not ex- 
pressed the force, the volume and immensity of this 
marvelous exposition of nature’s power. 

The pictures of Gloucester represent the final pe- 
riod of Twachtman’s production. Harbors and ship- 
ping seem always to have held a vague fascination 
for the painter, who enjoyed the pictorial suggestive- 


51 


ness of houses, wharves, water and their infinite pos- 
sibilities for artistic arrangement. There was a human 
association too, which though not directly indicated 
in the pictures appealed to the painter. And perhaps 
there was a reawakening of the earlier romantic days 
at Venice. His quest was as eager and spirited now 
as in the more youthful time, but his thought is scat 
tered over many canvases and in his maturity he is 
still actuated by momentary impulse. It is reflected 
in his painting. There is a joy in the first attack, but 
in many of the canvases we feel the lack of sustained 
effort, the consistent building up of pictorial purpose, 
and an over reliance upon the mood of the moment. 
In consequence, the result is uneven. His pictures of 
this period have not a sense of perfectness, the inevi- 
table conclusion of an idea carried out in definitely 
conscious and calculated terms. In experimenting 
with the unity of form and color and their effective 
relations, the painter has neglected their content and 
significance. There is little differentiation in substance 
and surface, that relation which exists between the 
solid and the soft, the resisting and the non-resisting, 
and in short those distinctions which are based upon 
the relativity of things and their impression upon the 
human mind apart from the visual illusion. Charming 
in arrangement, suggestive and technically spirited, 
one does not feel the fullness of form, the volume and 
solidity which are a part of complete realization. 
Many of the Gloucester pictures are, in fact, unfin- 
ished, canvases which were started in a moment of 


52 


interest and then discontinued. But the best examples 
attain great beauty of design and individual expres: 
sion. Among these, perhaps the most interesting are 
the motives looking down on the harbor from the 
hills of East Gloucester, where the fish houses and 
wharves jutting into the water and the distant city 
form an effective background for the rocky pastures 
and patterned trees of the nearer plane. Each picture 
seems to a certain extent an experiment, a venturing 
into new realms of consciousness and appreciation, 
and it is precisely this quickened spirit that the paint: 
er has so successfully imparted to the spectator. 

At Gloucester Twachtman made numerous“thumb 
box” studies, suggested possibly by the early ‘‘po- 
chades”of Venice, impulsive sketches which allowed 
the painter to artistically improvise without that con- 
tinued effort which is so necessary in the larger com: 
position and which allows of that casual treatment 
which is not so satisfying on a larger scale. Diminu- 
tive in size, there is a mastery of touch and a bigness 
of conception which lends to these little souvenirs a 
true distinction and style. 

As a figure painter Twachtman achieves a very 
happy ensemble and an intimate realization of his 
subjects in their own environment. There is nothing 
deliberately contrived or set up. He seems to sur- 
prise a living moment and transfer it to canvas. His 
subjects are never on show. When the figure forms 
the principal element of interest, his constructional 
rendering is not altogether convincing, but Twacht- 


53 


man had a splendid sense of poise and posture and a 
fine understanding of contour and silhouette. This 
gives to his compositions an authority and distinction, 
without which his figures would seem somewhat 
empty. 

Trained as a figure painter in the Academical 
schools of Europe, few of the early examples survive, 
as much of the continental work was lost at sea. The 
canvases which best represent Twachtman in this 
genre date from the Greenwich period, and are for 
the most part pictures of his immediate family. Not 
portrait studies or physiognomical characterizations, 
the figure is seen as a whole, and the painter finds his 
interest more in the attitude and suggested environ- 
ment than in detailed delineation and likeness. He is 
interested particularly in the luminous envelopment 
of the figure and in the study of the local color as mod- 
ified by the dominant hue of the light. 

Twachtman never used a studio in the academical 
manner. His subjects were painted in their accus- 
tomed environment and thus assume a naturalness 
and intimacy quite foreign to the cold light of the 
studio proper. This indicates again the impression- 
able rather than the analytical nature of the artist. 
Twachtman is pure vision. He eliminates as much 
as possible the intervention of the intellectual. His 
figures, therefore, are not so interesting as individual 
characterizations as for their artistic significance. 


54 








i 


ep? 7 : 
or ar) ye 
Ai aa ‘g 





PART FIVE 


ae MANS technique has three distinct 
manifestations, which may be associated with the 
three different periods of his work. The first is directly 
influenced by the methods of Munich and themanner 
of Duveneck, a practice which the painter found in 
vogue on his advent in the German schools in 1875. A 
revolt against the classicism of the preceding epoch, it 
was areturn to the realism and the more direct paint: 
ing of the masters of the low countries. Influenced 
by the new movement of France, in which the vigor 
of Courbet was a constructive force, the artist saw 
his subject in nature rather than in imagination or 
the historical drama of the past. The classical method 
was a thin coloring over a carefully modulated un- 
dertone. It was based on drawing. The reaction rec: 
ognized the definite characteristics of the brush. It 
was based on painting. Constructively the emphasis 
was placed upon planes and contours, rather than the 
more sculpturesque development of the round real- 
ized by chiaroscuro. The composition was arranged 
by mass rather than line. The teachers encouraged 
direct painting and bold brushwork, in contrast to 
the somewhat effete polish of their predecessors. Not 
imitating surface qualities the paint was applied with 
unctuous impasto and brushed with expressive sig- 
nificance. It was a splendid training for our painter 
and accounts for his technical facility acquired at an 
early age. The method is, however, more adapted to 
the construction of linear planes and strongly charac- 


DD 


terized contours than it is to aerial perspective and 
envelopment. 

The transitional stage is observed in several small 
canvases painted at Avondale between 80 and’83. 
The brown palette of Munich is retained, but the pig- 
ment is applied more thinly and evenly. It is not, 
however, until the French period that we see a com- 
plete change in technique. Whether this was due 
entirely to Parisian influence, the requirements of 
new subjects, or the response to the aesthetic efflor- 
escence we shall not say, but it is apparent that the 
change of technique is intimately related to the change 
in expression, and the manner and matter are welded 
into one. The simple lines of French landscape, the 
low-lying hills, the gray expanse of sky and mirrored 
waters, the evanescent atmosphere were not suited 
to the exploitation of pyrotechnics in pigment, and 
the painter showed his artistic sensibility in adopting 
a more sympathetic method of expression. Whereas 
in the earlier manner we observe expressive unc: 
tuous brushwork and impulsive improvisation, in 
the French landscapes we see a thin, flowing brush, 
a blending of colors and a more methodical control of 
the pigment. The contours show a delicate refraction 
as one plane merges into the other, a softening of the 
edge, which is sympathetically related to the gray 
tones of the subject. The robust vigor of the Munich 
manner is replaced by delicacy and reserve; the agita- 
tion of varying contours by simple flat surfaces. 

It is not until the final period of the nineties that 


56 


we observe the mature manner of the painter and his 
more personal characteristics. His method of paint: 
ing was a direct outcome of his aesthetic idea. As he 
pictured the more elusive and evanescent effects of 
nature, so too his technique is elusive and subtle. He 
seems to lend to his treatment something of the spirit 
of the thing itself. The snow is heavy, though soft, 
and the texture of the pigment indicates its surface; 
the flowing water is painted with a rapid and expres- 
sive brush; the painted flowers of the field seem im- 
bued with the delicacy of their own nature. 
Working directly from nature, Twachtman’s man- 
ner was, however, indirect. As he was not a realist 
in the literal sense of the term, his search was first for 
the aesthetic filling of space, and therefore the begin- 
ning of the picture seemed almost formless and unin- 
telligible. This was done in a light wash or scumble 
and with the observance of only the most significant 
masses and color relations. Several of his later can- 
vases have been left in this first state, unfinished, and 
yet in the creative sense complete. This first vision 
preceded any further work on the canvas, and if sat- 
isfying, all went well; if not, the struggle and torment 
of adjustment played havoc with the surface. But 
before the painter was satisfied with the arrangement 
there could be no further development of the more 
imitative embellishment of the picture. This is why 
Twachtman, in the last phase of his work, was not a 
finished painter in the academical understanding of 
the term. He did not follow a fixed or conventional 


57 


method of painting. Itis not affected, insistent or man- 
nered: but on the contrary is varied as a result of his 
different pictorial problems suggested by the charac- 
ter of the subject and the mood of the moment. His 
method was the outcome of an idea rather than the 
exposition of a method. 

Frequently Twachtman achieves his result ‘ta pre- 
mier coup”, with a delightful flow of color. The move 
ment of the brush is free and unconscious, the pig- 
ment is animated and suggestive. But although im- 
pulsive and exhilarating, the effect is somewhat thin 
and lacking in that solidity and fullness of form which 
he achieved when working over carefully prepared 
undertones. For Twachtman was not a facile or clev- 
er painter; nor one who relied on technical tricks and 
factitious effects. The painting is not exploited for 
itself, but is preceded by the artistic vision which ac- 
tuates it, and Twachtman’s vision was far too refined 
and searching to be content merely with professional 
proficiency. 

If Twachtman did not strive for meticulous finish 
or a suave ingratiating surface, he attained a very 
personal technical style, and one quite consistent with 
the effect which he desired to produce. Working 
in a high key, he deliberately avoided an unctuous, 
varnishlike effect and would frequently expose his 
pictures to sun and rain to relieve the pigment of 
superfluous oil and thus produce a uniform mat or 
dry surface. Although seemingly free in handling, 
Twachtman often labored incessantly over his canvas 


50 





before he achieved the desired result. In fact, he relied 
greatly on building up an opaque underground to pro- 
duce a suggestive texture which allowed the painter 
to work in thin, semi-transparent washes, by means 
of which he rendered so successfully the illusion of 
the atmospheric veil and imparted a freedom of brush- 
work which has the air of casual improvisation. 

Although susceptible to the colorful innovations 
of the impressionists and their technical expression, 
Twachtman was not interested in the science of color 
and did not attempt to create the optical illusion of 
light by the juxtaposition of complimentary con- 
trasts, or the method of the so called ‘‘Pointillists” or 
‘‘spotists” in rendering it. Using broken or division 
of color to quicken and enhance its activity, he did 
not make of it a mannerism or cultivate it as an ele- 
ment of style. 

When Emil Carlsen told’ Twachtman that he was 
a great technician, I wachtman said,‘*Technic, I don’t 
know anything about it”. It is often true that one be- 
comes utterly unconscious of that about which one 
knows most, and to become entirely unconscious of 
technic is certainly to have mastered it. 


PART SIX 


HE ETCHINGS of Twachtman were made dur- 
ing the late eighties, at a time when the younger 
painters were using the needle with a quickened in- 
terest in line as a means of original expression, as con- 


99 


trasted to the stereotyped professional etchers of an 
earlier period. Whistler had awakened a keen inter- 
est in the aesthetic possibilities of the art, its express: 
ive significance and power of suggestion. Duveneck’s 
plates were produced between the years 1880 and 
1884, and although his mastery of the medium and 
his virile, solid construction were not so tempting for 
the novice to follow as the more simple and alluring 
treatment of Whistler, they, nevertheless, established: 
an American precedent, particularly for the young 
followers of the masterin Italy. It was natural, there- 
fore, that Twachtman should be tempted by the new- 
ly discovered possibilities of the medium. If by nature 
he was not sufficiently self disciplined ever to become 
a technical master of the resources and processes of 
the art, he was artistically peculiarly fitted to use the 
needlein a most effective manner. His understanding 
of significant line and his appreciation of space rela- 
tions at once gave him the most valuable attributes of 
the painter etcher, while his discerning vision and 
responsive hand furthered the more objective real: 
ization of the subject. Ever more interested in the 
beauty of form than the form in itself, his aspiration 
was more closely related to the art of Whistler than 
the more robust and objective expression of Duven- 
eck, and his best plates show a sensibility similar to 
the former master. The true value of Twachtman’s 
etchings lies, therefore, not so much in the exposition 
of the art as in the expression of the artist. 


60 


Twachtman etched twenty-six plates, mostly di- 
minutive in size, though some were 8 x 12 inches or 
larger. Many of the compositions are from previous 
pictures or drawings, so that the conception was well 
visualized before the wax was drawn upon. Al- 
though preserving an air of impromptu and a flair of 
familiarity, the line was very definitely and con- 
sciously considered. The foreign subjects, eight in 
number, are somewhat heavy in execution and biting 
and less personal than the later motives found nearer 
home. 

The ‘‘Mouth of the Seine”, evidently from the pic: 
ture of the same subject, is however most felicitous 
in spacing and in emphatic but suggestive line. The 
artist had a sensitive regard for the unetched surface, 
and the characterization produced by the accentua- 
tion of line and spotting of darks. In the ‘Quay at 
Honfleur” the white sail of a nearby boat is effective 
ly contrasted to the masts and rigging which form 
a weblike background. The figure on the quay is 
suggestive of Whistler. The Venetian plate of the 
Guidecca lacks the beauty of balance and design so 
characteristic of the artist. 

In the two landscapes of Avondale, the nervous, 
sensitive touch is most suggestive and descriptive; 
summary in manner, yet full and expressive in real: 
ization. The little plate of Branchville has something 
of the significant treatment of the familiar ‘‘Six’s 
Bridge” of Rembrandt. Casual in its effect, it is most 
subtly calculated in design. One realizes in this ex- 


61 


ample that true distinction and style are entirely ir- 
relevant to the so-called importance of a subject, and 
it may require a more highly sensitized appreciation 
of line to convey the sense of the unaffected, random 
or natural than the more ambitious compositional 
conception. In‘"The Old Mill, Bridgeport”, the dilap- 
idated framework has been made to express some: 
thing of majesty irrespective of motive, and the form 
has been made a true product of the mind. 

Twachtman is at his best in the Bridgeport group. 
The angular picturesqueness of docks, buildings and 
boats is particularly adaptable to him. The intimacy 
and animation of the water front made a very personal 
and human appeal to the painter. There is something 
peculiarly American about the physiognomy of these 
window-spotted frame houses, the sea-worn piers . 
with outstanding piles, the light rigged yacht, and 
the heavy, unkempt barges, all jumbled together in 
an odd mixture of kind and condition. Nowhere else 
is there quite this same salt sea slovenliness, of use 
and disuse. The dock is public property, a meeting 
place as free as the high seas, and as adventurous. 
This was particularly true during the time of our 
painter. The shanty is now obsolete, the pier is priv- 
ate property, and the water front is parcelled out to 
industrial companies. We see the reflection of man 
in his works and Twachtman has portrayed the hu- 
man aspect of his subject with instinctive understand- 
ing and incisive effect. 


62 











PART SEVEN 


BBOT THAYERis quoted as saying, ‘*T wacht- 
man is like a beautiful flower growing up in a 
new country”. This is particularly applicable to the 
artist asa pastellist. Twachtman made of the medium 
a personal expression. He used the dry color for its 
delicacy and purity, and with an aesthetic regard for 
its definite limitations. Rather than attempt a full 
realization of the subject, he sees in pastel a means of 
suggestion and chooses a subject compatible with its 
nature. We remark again the influence of Whistler 
in technical practice and aesthetic guidance. Like 
Whistler, Twachtman employs a gray or buff cart- 
ridge paper, and uses the chalk as a means of drawing 
in color as suggested by its own nature, rather than 
as an imitation of the fuller technical method of the 
oil medium. The color registers, therefore, relative 
to the background, which is left the natural color of 
the paper, and the pastel is applied with a due regard 
for its delicacy and with expressive and sensitive 
touch. 

Twachtman executed few pure landscapes in pas- 
tel, but made many interesting notes about the harbor 
of Bridgeport, some lovely little drawings of his chil: 
dren, and most truly personal and unique are the ex- 
quisite studies of field flowers. We have remarked 
that in the early pictures of Twachtman the first plane 
begins in the immediate foreground, and that he ren- 
dered the rushes and flowers with great skill and 
sympathetic understanding. In the pastels the flow- 


63 


ers become the subject. Drawn against a background 
of neutral toned paper, the color is rendered in deli- 
cate harmonies, the form lightly and deftly suggested. 
Unstudied in composition, without apparent arrange: 
ment, the flowers of the field seem to radiate some- 
thing of their own wild but exquisite nature. In no 
other form has Twachtman registered a more per- 
sonal expression. Not conventionally decorative or 
striking in effect, these delicate studies are a beautiful 
tribute to the subject and the medium in which they 
are manifested. 

In the drawings of the artist’s children one remarks 
at once their intimacy and unaffected charm. Not 
deliberately posed, the subject seems to be arrested in 
a happy moment and is fixed only on the painted 
surface. There is a certain endearment in the way 
in which the colored stroke is rendered, a sensitive 
reflection of the artist’s temperament and a silent tes- 
timony of his affection. 

There is a great charm also in many of the notes 
made about the painter's home at Greenwich, slight 
and unpretentious, but delightfully suggestive. Ina 
certain way these sketches display Twachtman’s 
highest attributes as an artist. Unencumbered by the 
technicalities of the heavier medium, he uses pastel 
with purely intuitive mind. Before the blank paper 
he sees his vision complete, and with a few magical 
strokes realizes it perfectly. Twachtman had an in: 
stinctive ability in placing a subject and this sense of 
relative adjustment is nowhere more fully manifested 


64 


than in the pastels. The Twachtman house at Round 
Hill, which figures in so many canvases, is perhaps 
more perfectly placed in some of these seemingly ran- 
dom notes than in the more ambitious pictures. 

Of the Bridgeport group we recall particularly the 
old ‘Footbridge’, the one which we see reversed in 
the etching of the same subject. The artist has seized 
in this temporary structure its significance as pure 
form, and has so rendered it in oblong spacing as to 
bring out its essential nature. A relic of the past, the 
old footbridge remains on paper a permanent record 
of aesthetic achievement. 


PART EIGHT 


[° has been frequently remarked that Twachtman 
was entirely unappreciated during his lifetime, and 
that his art was ahead of its time. With the passing 
years this assertion has been repeated and accepted. 
In the real sense this is not true. We must beware of 
measuring our degree of appreciation by prices paid 
in the salesroom; as we must also beware of overstatz 
ing the significance at the present time of one who is 
thought to have been neglected in his own time. The 
more we appreciate the departed artist in the present, 
the more we insist on his lack of appreciation in the 
past. It premises an understanding which was not 
given to the painter’s contemporaries; an applause 
which becomes sentimental and colorless. In brief, 
Twachtman is now taken for granted. Thus do we 
truly create our dead masters. 


65 


If, however, we measure the degree of apprecia- 
tion of an artist’s work by the records of the sales- 
room, we must conclude that Twachtman’s art is 
now universally appreciated and agree that during 
his lifetime it was entirely neglected. But we must 
not confuse art and business; and Twachtman was 
notably a poor man of business. It is true that he had 
several prominent patrons and that he was never in 
any immediate danger of starvation; but on the whole 
he was commercially not a success. Artistically, 
however, Twachtman was recognized and honored, 
not only by his confreres, but by amateurs. If itis a 
fact that many artists did not either enjoy his pictures 
or approve of his artistic principles, it only reveals 
that his work was reckoned with and that other 
artists have personal opinions also. Universality of 
agreement is a sure sign of atrophy. One does not 
criticise Velasquez for his inability to admire Ra- 
phael, or Ingres for his admiration of him. 

It must also be remembered that Twachtman died 
comparatively young. Several of his contemporaries, 
who were then equally unsuccessful, have since met 
with notable success, and undoubtedly Twachtman, 
had he lived, would through accumulated recognition 
have come completely into his own. 

It was a part of Twachtman’s genius that he ex: 
pressed the temperament of his time, and if we may 
judge the appreciation of his work, not by its univers: 
ality, but by its intensity, we are inclined to say that 


66 


it was most fully and rightly appreciated at the time 
of its production. 

The period of the nineties in America was quick- 
ened by an intense artistic impulse. The pictures of 
the Impressionists, whose work had been proclaimed 
abroad, had revolutionized the visual world, and our 
young American painters who had studied in France 
returned with enthusiasm and youthful exhilaration. 
But fortunately they did not return merely with a 
formula or a fad. The great lesson which they learned 
Was to appreciate and portray their environment. 
Whistler had shown that the pictorial possibilities of 
a place depend upon its susceptibility of arrangement, 
rather than its scenic or associative value. Monet, 
less sensitive to the niceties of decorative adjustment, 
but infatuated with the glory of sunlight and the 
great outdoors, transcribed with sensuous exuber- 
ance the ever changing picture of the world of light 
and color. The West was becoming awakened to the 
aesthetic significance of the East. It was an art of sug- 
gestion and decoration rather than representation. 

These universal influences are intimately reflected 
in the later work of Twachtman. Not imitating or 
echoing the work of others, he happily assimilated 
the significant expression of his time. To Whistler he 
owes much of his interest in decorative arrangement, 
his search for the suggestive, his militant dislike of 
conventional composition and hackneyed banalities. 
Through Whistler he came to know something of 
the art of the Japanese which quickened his natural 


67 


susceptibility to design. But the relation is indirect 
and we see little outward manifestation in Twacht- 
man’s pictures. It is more appreciable in some of the 
etchings and pastels in which it colors to a certain 
extent the choice of subject and technique. 

If Whistler incited Twachtman’s aesthetic sensi- 
bility and stimulated the search for new discoveries 
in line and form, Monet awakened his appreciation 
of light and color. Previously using color only in an 
extremely modified sense, a new world of beauty 
seems to reveal itself, and the painter revels in the 
subtle harmonies of sunlight and atmosphere. Ifin the 
early work the subject is selected for the picturesque 
contrast of light and dark, in the later work we find 
everything dependent upon tonal relations and unity. 
In this he echoes the spiritual yearning of the period, 
the love for the nuance as expressed in the haunting 
verse of Verlaine, wherein the sound has a magic- 
al affinity with the suggested sense; the plaintive, 
ephemeral melodies of Debussy; the variations of 
Whistler; or the colorful harmonies of Monet. The 
artist veils the form and the manner of expressing it, 
lest it be too apparent. The message is indirect. It is 
essentially a suggestive expression. At times thislove 
of subtle relations led to weakness, when the effect 
becomes so illusive as to be almost lost; and at times 
it assumes something of the nature of a stunt, where: 
in the painter has displayed only the keenness of his 
observation. There is a fear of the over obvious. 
Whistler had ridiculed the sunset. It was bad taste 


68 


to paint one. And Whistler too had enveloped his 
mood in mist. 

Twachtman openly declared the decorative inten- 
tion of his painting. But he did not define his under- 
standing of the decorative. He did not take a ready 
made pattern and impose it on his subject or translate 
his subject into a preconceived formula. Even such 
a distinguished designer as Whistler often adapted a 
Japanese design toa subj ect with which it had noinner 
relation. It is thus that design is debased. Twacht- 
man’s work has nothing of ornamental prettiness 
or affected pattern. He was not artfully clever and 
would have found it more difficult to paint a popular 
potboiler with its ingratiating suavity and factitious 
sophistication than to conceive a picture in his own 
back woods. He avoided the pictorial commonplace, 
but he made the commonplace pictorial. His interest 
was not that of an ornamentalist or a realist. He took 
a purely sensuous delight in the beauty of the visual 
world, and felt a keen enjoyment in the relative sig- 
nificance of form and color. And this for Twacht- 
man was the decorative. But there is something else 
which gets into his work for which we cannot ac- 
count in the purely decorative. It was that element 
which was so much a part of his nature that the 

ainter was not conscious of its existence. It was his 
indescribable appreciation of the human significance 
of things. This vitalizes his line and informs his com- 
position with meaning, without which the merely 
decorative is empty. It is this mysterious, indefinable 


69 


something which evades analysis that imbues his 
work with enduring charm. 

Twachtman’s artistic viewpoint is clearly ex- 
pressed in the phrase of his friend, J. Alden Weir, in 
speaking of ‘the elimination of certain preconceived 
ideas as to what constitutes a work of art”. In chal- 
lenging the standardized and conventional concep 
tions of tradition, nature at once bears rezexamination. 
Discarding the stereotyped composition and the ac- 
customed idea of picture making, the whole world is 
open for new discoveries. One realizes that realiza- 
tion is a thing of infinite mystery. We see nature as 
we have been taught to see it. The popular picture 
is of interest largely on account of association or the 
various human endearments artificially grouped to- 
gether in a single composition. Seldom, however, 
does nature compose in the grand style. Instead, 
therefore, of forcing nature into a preconceived idea 
Twachtman sought beauty in nature; instead of 
searching the country for places that conformed to 

ictures, he endeavored to make pictures out of places. 
This is quite different from saying that everything is 
of interest and everything is of beauty. Twachtman 
was not a realist merely by way of jotting down ev- 
ery day facts. His subject was carefully considered 
although it was not a typical subject. It was selected 
for its inherent relations of form. Beauty is revealed 
by mental comprehension. It is the manifestation of 
appreciation and the painter's purpose to express it. 
In the search for the scenic other painters had passed 


7O 


beauty unaware; Twachtman ignoring the scenic, 
discovered beauty in his own comprehension of it. 
His viewpoint was not apparent, but personal. 

We are saying, in brief, that Twachtman was an 
impressionist, and as such he was a follower rather 
than an imitator of a movement. The derivation of 
his impulse comes from France. But if the general 
viewpoint is of foreign origin, Twachtman makes a 
very personal use of it. He was, therefore, more in- 
dividual than original. This is at once apparent if we 
compare his work with the initiator of the move- 
ment, Claude Monet. Whereas we may observe 
similar characteristics, we will find that the structur- 
al form of the composition, the aesthetic organization 
and its technical manifestation are quite different. | 
Monet has a more colorful palette; a more vigorous 
and exuberant expression, as he was in physique likes 
wise more robust. Twachtman is more delicate and 
reserved, more subtle and evanescent. In line Twacht- 
man has a more rhythmic sense, a presentation less 
obvious, and an approach to stylistic distinction; 
while Monet is more natural and apparent. With our 
own master, Theodore Robinson, who was in away 
a connecting link between Twachtman and Impres- 
sionism, there are likewise certain similarities and as 
apparent differences. Robinson painted at Greenwich 
for a time and was closely associated with Twacht- 
man. Robinson was technically more clever and fe- 
licitous, more graphic and deliberate in characteriza- 
tion; but Twachtman had a finer and more unusual 


71 


sense of design, a freer use of paint, and if more sensiz 
tive in perception, at the same time more monumentz 
al in expression. 

With the other members of the impressionistic 
group in America we find a common purpose but in- 
dividual expression. Thus Weir, who was so much 
in sympathy with Twachtman’s aims and attain: 
ments and influenced by similar sources, created quite 
a different style. But both artists were tonalists, rez 
duced the value contrasts to avery limited range, and 
worked in variations of modified hues. With mutual 
enthusiasms their choice of subject was, however, 
governed by individual selection, with an inclination 
for things different, but never affecting the bizarre or 
the sensational. Yet both had a flair of modernism. 
Hassam is more truly decorative. Neverin altogether 
spiritual rapport with nature, he uses it as a back: 
sround for deliberately arranged figures, or sees in it 
a means of ornamental exposition. In manner more 
truly impressionistic, in color more prismatic, he has 
not the same suggestive charm of Twachtman, but is 
more effective and striking. 

If, however, we make contrasting comparisons we 
shall discover not only Twachtman’s characteristics, 
but his apparent limitations. Thus, if we compare 
Twachtman with Winslow Homer, we will see imz- 
mediately the subjective aspect of the former and the 
objective aspect of the latter; the personality of the 
one and the impersonality of the other. Twachtman 
delicate, ephemeral, evanescent; Homer bold, vigor- 


» 72 


ous and dramatic. The one hiding the form of nature 
in atmospheric refraction; the other seeking to reveal 
it by striking contrast. Twachtman using the illusion 
of suggestion, sensing the softness of ambient form; 
Homer expressing the austerity and uncompromising 
severity of natural force and substance. Both work: 
ing directly from nature, the attainment is strikingly 
opposed. 

When we speak of Inness we enter quite a diff 
erent realm. Enveloped in a romantic haze, lost in 
colorful illusion, moved by the recurrent changes of 
nature, tossed with turbulent skies, bathed in golden 
glow, we become a part of a soul imbued and efflo- 
rescent world. Impassioned, intense and dramatic, 
the pictures of Inness seem overcharged in the pres- 
ence of the wistful and quiet canvases of Twachtman. 
Swayed by the great impulses of nature, the fleeting 
moments of splendor, Inness portrays her moods with 
poetic fervor, while Twachtman seeking the tran- 
quility of sequestered places sees in nature a motive 
for an appealing arrangement. 

Contrasting comparisons if irrelevant are some: 
times illuminating. One recalls the phrase of Buffon, 
‘Le style c'est [homme”. 

Twachtman was not a universal genius. His emo- 
tional reactions were limited. Sensitive to the refined 
and the delicate, his nature did not respond to the 
powerful and the dramatic. Quickened by the allur- 
ing lines of grace and the harmonic relations of tones, 
he is oblivious to the stress and strain of nature, its 


rie ° 


massive bulk and age defying constancy. His work 
is imbued with charm and feeling. Finely attuned to 
the fleeting, it misses the eternal. The ennobling emo- 
tions, the transcendent thought, the moods of the 
mind, are not reflected in the evanescent hues of the 
master. Dependent upon optical stimulation and the 
exhilaration of the moment Twachtman lacks some- 
thing of the universal quality that transcends the 
particular. Working directly from nature he misses 
the more abstract significance that comes from mediz 
tation. It is asensuous rather than an intellectual art, 
and is therefore more pleasing than profound. But, 
however limited, it is pure and unadulterated. It is 
useless to compare the violet and the oak. Both are 
unique. If Twachtman does not soar in the universal 
empyrean, he lures us to the tranquility of his own 


world of beauty. 


7* 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


North American Review, 1902. An appreciation 
by his friends and fellow painters. 

The Art of John H. Twachtman. By Charles C. 
Curran. The Literary Miscellany; Winter, 1910. 

John Henry Twachtman. By Eliot Clark. Art in 
America; April, 1919. 

John H. Twachtman. By Carolyn C. Mase. In- 
ternational Studio; January, 1921. 

The Art of John Twachtman. By Eliot Clark 
International Studio; January, 1921. 

American Painters of Winter Landscape. By Eliot 
Clark. Scribner's Magazine; December, 1923. 

Paintings by Twachtman. By Royal Cortissoz. 
New York Tribune; January 12, 1919. 

John H.Twachtman. Preface to Catalogue. Buf 
falo Fine Arts Academy; March, 1913. 

John H. Twachtman. Loan Exhibition, Century 
Association. An appreciation, signed ‘\A.T.”. 

John H.Twachtman. By Charles deKay. The Art 
World; June, 1918. 

John H. Twachtman. By Forbes Watson. Arts 
and Decoration; April, 1920. 

John H. Twachtman’s Etchings. By Margery 
Austen Ryerson. Artin America; February, 1920. 

The Art and Etchings of John Henry T wachtman. 
By R. T. Wickenden. Frederick Keppel & Co. 


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